The Frozen River an Imaginative Look at Martha Ballard

 

 The Frozen River (2023)

By Ariel Lawhon

Doubleday, 433 pages

★★★★★

 

What do we really know about the everyday lives of 18^th century settlers in remote areas New England? Most recorded history is about the high and the mighty. We know a bit more about everyday life in Hallowell, Maine because Martha Ballard, a midwife and healer, was taught to write by her husband Ephraim. She kept a journal that remained obscure until historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich uncovered that journal and wrote the Bancroft- and Pulitzer Prize-wining A Midwife’s Tale in 1990.

 

Novelist Ariel Lawhon draws upon Ulrich, but only as the springboard for an imaginative novel that takes us inside 18^th- century Hallowell, a close-to-the-margins village of sawyers, shopkeepers, farmers, mill workers, and tradespeople. The Frozen River of her book's title is the Kennebec, which does indeed freeze in the winter. If you know anything about northern New England you know that winters are long and deep. Lawhon parses parts of Ballard’s journal, including a rape accusation against high officials. Lawhon’s intent is not to dramatize actual history, though she's amazingly accurate and  illustrates the subordinate role of women before and just after the American Revolution. Martha Ballard, her heroine, is opinionated, assertive, and outspoken to a fault.

 

If you wonder how that’s possible, remember that Martha Ballard lived many decades after the Salem witch trials, hence midwives such as she and a mysterious free woman of color called Doctor (for her healing powers) were no longer in danger of being prosecuted as witches. Still, they remained part of a deeply gendered social system.

 

Martha and Ephraim have a rare companionate marriage that produced nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Big trouble begins in 1789, when the body of Joshua Burgess is pulled from the icy Kennebec. Judge Joshua North is quick to rule it an accidental drowning. How convenient for him who, along with Burgess stood accused of ravishing Rebecca Foster. Martha notes that wounds to the head and rope burns around Burgess’ neck indicate that he was murdered before being dumped into the river.

 

The Frozen River takes a hard look at those of standing versus plebeian society. North calls upon Doctor Benjamin Page, an arrogant young Harvard grad whose opinions exceed his skill. He sides with North, as do other men of substance. Does it matter if they are autocrats or liars? Will they prevail, or will they pay for their iniquities?

 

The Frozen River becomes a cat-and-mouse drama in the dead of winter. Lawhon immerses us so deeply that we come to know the personalities and sentiments of everyone in Hallowell. We quaff an ale at the local tavern, listen to gossip, buy luxuries such as cakes of ink, chop ice from the mill wheel, form alliances, weigh the economic dangers of said alliances, and learn quite a bit about the often gruesome yet heroic practice of midwifery. Martha's journal plays an important part in the story, but not always in the ways that you might expect. Through strategic departures from Ulrich’s scholarly work Lawhon fashions a drama that feels like a dress rehearsal for Peyton Place.

 

We are also cognizant of how religion and morality are woven into the social fabric. For example, when Lydia North begs Martha for a tonic to relieve her debilitating headaches, should Martha practice Christian charity, or allow the wife of a crooked judge to suffer the fate her husband inflicts upon others? Should men who impregnate their conquests wed them even if they have no interest in doing so?

 

Lawhon uses a lot of very clever metaphors throughout the book to focus her themes. Knowledge and gender versus male meddling is symbolized via Martha and Dr. Page.  Reminders that the world her characters inhabit remains (at best) half wild shines through sightings of a rare silver fox, a disobedient horse, and a "pet" falcon. Even comeuppances–as satisfying as they might or might not be–are as unforgiving as the weather and river that encircles Hallowell. 

 

I adored this book, but I again emphasize that much of what we read is fictional. Among other things, that’s why Paul Revere gets a cameo. This is, however, a rare novel in which both the fictional re-imagination of Martha Ballard and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s prize-winning non-fictional take on her are equally magnificent.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The Verdict Reconsidered: A Classic Film

 

 

The Verdict (1982)

Directed by Sidney Lumet

20^th Century Fox, 129 minutes, R (language, brief nudity, violence)

★★★★★

 

In 1983, The Verdict was nominated for five Academy Awards, including most of the big ones. It was its misfortune to be swept aside by Gandhi and audience responses that were less sterling than its reviews. It is, however, a great courtroom drama. It was directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet with a screenplay from David Mamet, a guarantee that it had enough salty language to give it an R rating. (Its nudity and violence are mild by today’s standards.)

 

Paul Newman is Frank Galvin, once a mainstay among Boston lawyers but now a regular in its Irish bars. Frank has descended so low that he’s an ambulance chaser whose TV ads you might see after 11 pm. That doesn’t begin to describe Frank’s desperation. He has pretty much worn out his welcome everywhere, though an old friend Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) tosses him a potential life saver and a warning not to screw it up. Deborah Ann Kay lies in a comma. There are enough questions about what went wrong that her brother-in-law Kevin Doneghy and her sister Sally (Roxanne Hart) have filed a medical malpractice suit in hope of recovering money to pay for Deborah’s care.

 

All Frank has to do is what is often done in civil suits, settle out of court. The diocese of Boston admits no wrong but offers $210,000 dressed up as an act of compassion. Frank could simply meet with the Doneghys, get them to sign off, collect a big fee, and begin to get his life and practice in order. That’s what would have happened had Frank not gone to the hospital to see what’s left of Deborah Ann. Without telling the  Doneghys of the proposal, Frank rejects the settlement and plans to take the case to court.

 

You name it and the card is against Frank. Suing the Catholic Church in Boston is akin to me challenging a heavyweight boxing champion to a fistfight. The two doctors in the suit–Toller and Gruber­–are acclaimed obstetrics physicians. Bishop Brophy (Edward Binns) is as oily as the Caspian Sea, but he’s smooth as silk and as canny as a fox.  He hires a law firm headed by the courtly Ed Concanon (James Mason). Concanon  looks suave and sophisticated but it would be safe to say his access to dirty tricks is more sophisticated than his moral compass. The physician who was gung ho to help Frank absents himself on the eve of the trial. Frank quickly pivots to a doctor in New York he has never met. He is Dr. Thompson (Joe Seneca), an African American without a direct connection to the events. A black man? In Boston? In 1983? My odds against the aforementioned boxer are better.

 

Could it get any worse? Yes. Hoyle, the trial judge has it out for Frank and makes no secret of his admiration for Toller, Gruber, the Bishop, and Attorney Concanon. Frank’s hatred of Judge Hoyle is equally palpable and the two go at each other like hyenas at a roadkill. Plus, the Doneghys learn that Frank turned down the settlement offer and has risked losing everything. Frank needs a miracle.

 

He's probably not going to find one in Boston dive bars or with the pinball machines he tilts in frustration. Frank seems to be slipping deeper into his cups, though he does acquire a lover who can match him drink for drink: Laura Fischer (Charlotte Rampling). She professes faith in Frank–enough that he breaks out of his funk, but he’s still no match for Concanon or Boston’s religio-political machine.

 

The Verdict features it all: double crosses, browbeating witnesses (check out Lindsay Crouse as Kaitlin Costello), favoritism, a shocking breakup, a bittersweet verdict, and a post-trial letdown. Newman and Warden are wonderful as grizzled hard-nosed Boston lawyers. Newman is especially convincing as a world weary nothing-left-to-lose hangdog drunk. Even the accents are mostly right. The cinematography of Andrzej Bartkowiak captures the cigar smoke, the darkness, the spilled booze, and the shabby courtrooms of the 1980s. (Warning: 1980s clothing and hair appear!)

 

It's a terrific film that is now rightly considered a classic. Ignore audience scores in the 70s; too many viewers want cheap endings with protagonists who overcome all flaws. The Verdict shines for its verisimilitude, even it does get a few court procedures wrong. Call it grit over rainbows and flowers.

 

Rob Weir

Saint Omer a Gut-wreching Film

 

Saint Omer (2022)

Directed by Alice Diop

Les Films du losange, PG-13

In French with subtitles

★★★★

 

In Monday's review of Anatomy of a Fall I noted ways in which the French legal system is unique. Among them is that judges have far more discretionary power than in the United States and can consider extenuating circumstances, even those rooted in non-French culture.

 

Saint Omer is a dramatization of one of the most famous trials in French history. Director Alice Diop attended the 2013 trial of Fabienne Kabou, a Senegalese immigrant who murdered her infant daughter. For the record, Saint Omer refers to the location where the crime took place, not any individual involved with it. The film takes several liberties with the actual trial, but not many.

 

We first meet Rama, who is probably Diop’s alter ego. Rama (Kayije Kagame) is Senegalese, and a high-powered literature professor and novelist. She is expecting a child with Adrian (Thomas De Pourquevy), a white, gentle bear of a man. Though Rama has a prestigious position, she and Adrian live in a crowded apartment with several of Rama’s relatives, including her drama queen mother. Rama lectures about trauma in literature, the ostensible reason for traveling from Paris to Saint Omer to witness the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda).

 

Coly’s was a gut-wrenching trial. Laurence is a graduate student, Catholic, and a highly intelligent young woman who speaks impeccable French. Much of her drive has to do with her strong-willed and domineering mother Odile (Salimata Kamate). Laurence readily confesses that she traveled to Saint Omer, checked into a hotel, cuddled her 15-month-old daughter, calmly waited until dark, walked to the beach, and placed her baby on the sand knowing she would drown when the tide turned. In the United States this would be a cut-and-dried murder of the first degree; Laurence knew exactly what she was doing, and because she carefully planned it, was of sound mind–cultural differences would not matter.

 

Laurence has no idea why she fabricated parts of her life or would wish to kill a daughter she professed to love. The présidente du tribunal (presiding judge) is both gentle and flabbergasted. She (Valérie Dréville) tries valiantly to get Laurence to explain herself. She admits only to being upset that her boyfriend Luc Dumontet (Xavier Maly) made her to leave his apartment. When Dumontet takes the stand, we are stunned to see that he is perhaps three times as old as Laurence. He admits he wanted to end their relationship, but vehemently insists that is not responsible for Laurence’s horrible deed. Dumontet is a bit odd to say the least, but when Laurence is questioned about their relationship or being depressed, like the judge’s questions about her lies and motives she responds, “Je ne sais quoi” (I don’t know). Throughout the trial her affect is flat and emotionless. That is how she suggests that sorcery must be involved. Sorcery? Should the judge take such an antique cultural artifact seriously? Is she mentally ill?

 

During a break in the trial Rama has lunch with Odile, who ignores the crime and is obsessed with whether the news media will continue to stress the intelligence of her daughter. Rama is shaken and conflicted. Family parallels are obvious, but can she also understand or empathize with Laurence? Could any woman? This film will shake you to the core.

 

Saint Omer has won numerous awards at film festivals and a César for best film. Malanda also won numerous prizes for playing Laurence. Rightly so. She made herself such a blank slate that we ponder whether sorcery was in play. Malanda also said that she had nightmares for a year after playing the role. Although she was less heralded, Valerie Dréville was letter-perfect as the judge. Hers was a tightrope walk between compassion and utter disbelief.

 

Saint Omer is a veritable modern day Medea story. In legend, she was the lover then wife, of the Argonaut Jason and helped him carry off the golden fleece. Later she killed their children. (Go to Wikipedia for more on Medea.) What would you do with Laurence if you were a trial judge with discretionary power?

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Anatomy of a Fall Destined to be a Classic Film?

 

 

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Directed by Justine Triet

Neon/Lionsgate, 152 minutes, R (for ridiculous!)

In French, German, subtitles, and English

★★★★★

 

Welcome to Off-center views goes to court. I will be featuring several courtroom films, the first of which is Anatomy of a Fall, a French/English/German film that was nominated for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, and won both the Palme d’or at Cannes and numerous César awards in France.

 

The first thing you need to know about this brilliant film is that the French judicial system is quite different from that of the United states. First of all, evidential rules are quite different. The courts often appoint independent investigators in criminal trials rather than leaving the task to prosecutors and defending attorneys. That’s because French trial courts are more concerned with statutory law than with legal precedents. Judges have far more power in France and lead the trials in an inquisitory manner. The standard of innocence or guilt depends upon the judge’s findings rather than the U.S. standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” There are usually no juries and there is very little cross examination by prosecuting or defending attorneys. If that sounds harsh, the ameliorating factor is that judges have far more leeway in probing extenuating circumstances.

 

Anatomy of a Fall takes place in the present time. Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is a German novelist married to Samuel, a university lecturer. Their son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) is severely vision impaired due to a childhood accident. We later learn that Samuel blamed himself for the accident.

 

Sandra is in the living room conducting an interview, which she cuts short because the song “P. I. M. P. “ is blaring from the upper level of their chalet. Sandra assumes that her husband is playing the music at ear-splitting level because he frequently does that and claims it helps him work. However, when Daniel comes back from a walk with his guide dog Snoop, his father's body is prone in the blood-soaked snow outside the home. The open question is connected to the movie’s title; did he commit suicide or was he murdered?

 

There are suggestive but inconclusive reasons to draw either conclusion. Some testimony suggests that there was marital strain and loud arguing; Sandra counters that her outbursts were related to her discontent with being forced to move to a remote area near Grenoble. The prosecution points to ways in which murders in her novels mirrored the pattern of Daniel's death. Experts for both prosecution and defense illustrate how on one hand Daniel could not have fallen four stories without being pushed, or how he absolutely could have done so. Also introduced is that the marriage was strained because Sandra had an affair with another woman.

 

The movie is rated R ostensibly because of theme of suicide and bad language, though it’s my belief that the real reason for the R rating is Sandra's bisexuality. The movie also suggests that there is sexual frisson between Sandra and the woman she was interviewing and Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud), her defense attorney.

 

Other complicating matters intervene, not the least of which is Daniel’s shifting testimony. Still another is though Sandra is fluent in conversational French, as a native German speaker she has trouble following the rapid pace and can’t express herself with enough precision. (She is granted permission to switch from French to English.) Another unique aspect of French law is that when children are involved they are placed under a court monitor to prevent them from being unduly influenced and to deal with their emotional distress. Marge Bender (Jehnny Beth) plays that role quite expertly in Anatomy of a Fall.

 

Director Justine Triet reported that the 2007 Amanda Knox case in 2007 partly inspired her to co-write and direct the film. (Knox is the college student American college student accused of killing her roommate in Italy.) In that case and this film, guilt or innocence depended upon who was telling the story.

 

Much of Anatomy of a Fall takes place in the courtroom, a setting that could make for very dull viewing.  But the overlay of ambiguity, family drama, contrasting points of view, and Sandra’s coolness make this film riveting in every way. This one comes highly recommended. It might well endure as an art house classic.

 

Rob Weir

The Berry Pickers a Moving Novel

 

 

 

The Berry Pickers (2023)

By Amanda Peters

Catapult Books, 303 pages.

★★★★

 

The Berry Pickers is a tale of loss and of people trying to find their way home. The latter journey entails getting back to Nova Scotia by way of Maine, Boston, and Saskatchewan.

 

This superb debut novel by Amanda Peters begins in 1962; that is before the Sixties became the Sixties. But she doesn't stop there; hers is a saga that spans 50 years before it resolves. The title is meant to be taken literally. The home away from home is the Ellis farm near Bangor, Maine. It serves as a vivid and poignant fulcrum for a story that involves the migrant workers who pluck blueberries from the bushes. The owners live in a columned white house, while their seasonal laborers, though well-treated, reside in a much humbler facility. The migrants that concern us come from the family of Lewis and Kiju, Mi’kmaw Indians from Nova Scotia, and their children: Charlie, Ben, Joe, and Ruthie.

 

Four-year-old Ruthie is a spirited and carefree child. Her family are faithful workers, but being Indian is not a good thing in rural Maine during the early 1960s. As children, Ruthie and six-year-old brother Joe have more free time. Joe is supposed to keep his eye on Ruthie, but as they are playing near Ruthie’s favorite big rock, Joe’s attention briefly waivers, and Ruthie disappears. Owners and workers alike join Ruthie's family in trying to find her, though local law enforcement isn't all that concerned. Where is she? Lost in the woods? Dragged off by animals? Injured? A victim of foul play? Each year the family returns to the Ellis farm to work and seek new clues of Ruthie's fate. Such is the depth of their loss that they carry with them Ruthie's tiny boots and her favorite doll. Joe blames himself for what happened.

 

Their sorrow parallels that of Frank and Lenore, who are desperate to have a child. Lenore impulsively abducts a toddler and her ineffectual husband covers for her. The girl is named Norma and has a comfortable life, though she’s nearly smothered by her mother’s helicopter parenting. Norma is very bright, but each time she seeks to spread her wings, Lenore comes down with a crippling migraine. Norma suffers from troubling dreams and wonders why she's darker than immediate relatives.

 

You don't need higher math to add 1 + 1 on the setup, but Peters’ gift is to show the depth of damage done through pain, prejudice, and misplaced good intentions. Norma’s only ally is her aunt June, who connects her to Alice, a counselor who helps her deal with her anguish. June and Alice have secrets of their own, but Alice’s mentoring helps Norma gain a degree of independence–but only a degree. She attends college in Boston where she lives with her aunt June, though she's also protective of Norma. When her 19-year-old niece wanders into an Indian rally in Boston–this is the time of the American Indian Movement and “red power”–June forcibly pulls her away when a young man seeks to talk with her.

 

The novel is told mostly through the point of view of either Joe or Norma. As the calendar flips forward, Joe carries the additional burden of Charlie's death. Joe's guilt turns to anger, simmers, and boils. His downward spiral sends him on a wayward journey. In essence he becomes an adult runaway, occasionally helped and often scorned. As for Norma, she becomes an English teacher and a wife, though her marriage unravels.  

 

Peters will eventually return us to Nova Scotia. Her resolution is a take on the Biblical adage “you will know the truth and it will set you free,” but its more complicated than a gift-wrapped ending. I admired the deftness with which Peters structured a novel in which we largely know what happened but must wait to find out what it meant. Without resorting to heavy-handed preaching or delving deeply into countercultural sloganeering, Peters ripped the veneer off of postwar biases. Peters is of also of Mi’kmaw heritage, and The Berry Pickers quietly diverts our ethnic gaze from the macro level to how it plays out in two families who must learn from each other. Like Maine blueberries, such interactions are fragile and are best handled softly.

 

Rob Weir

The Lioness of Boston

 

 

 

The Lioness of Boston  (2023)

By Emily Franklin 

Godline, 369 pages

★★★

 

 

When you enter the Gardner Museum in Boston you step inside the realm of Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924). In The Lioness of Boston novelist Emily Franklin seeks to take us inside “Belle’s” mind. Lioness gathers steam with Belle’s marriage to to John “Jack” Lowell Gardner in 1860, then follows three prongs:  Belle’s problems with Boston Society, her nonconformist domestic life, and the philanthropic work for which she is best known.

 

The narrative structure follows a straight biographical line, the sort you could read in an encyclopedia. In such a structure, writers generally add speculative color to add drama. Franklin confines herself to invented dialogue, but this makes the book situationally claustrophobic. For example, one might expect a person married in 1860 to have something to say about the Civil War–even if she was just 20 at the time. Instead, Franklin’s centerpiece is the rigidity of Boston Society after the Civil War. 

 

It might surprise those who think of Boston as a bastion of liberalism to discover that it was once one of the most uptight cities in America. This is particularly true for member of the upper classes who feared anything vaguely unorthodox. If you have read the book or seen the movie The Age of Innocence you know that upper-class Brahmin society was rooted in Protestantism, conservatism, and nativism. They Brahmins were obsessed with propriety to the point of scripting how people men and women were to behave. Business and the public realm was for men; women, the “weaker” sex, were relegated to socializing with other women and taking care of children and households. 

 

This was burdensome to Belle Gardner, born into a rich, cosmopolitan New York family and whose adolescent education took place abroad. Imagine being deemed odd because you asked an architect to put different colored bricks and an arch in the pathway to your house. For quite some time, Belle’s only confidants were Jack and his sister Julia, whom she met when they were students in Paris. Alas, both Belle’s infant son and Julia died in 1865. Scandalmongers chalked up Belle’s subsequent miscarriage and breakdown to her bohemian ways. Never mind that Belle later became a good caregiver to three nephews.

 

At the Gardner Museum you will find a Venetian villa in the courtyard. That's because Belle felt much more comfortable in Italy than she did in Boston. In Franklin’s telling, Belle had to flee Boston to find her authentic self.  She and Jack spent many years traveling and living in Europe. As if she hadn't scandalized Boston society enough, imagine what “proper” Bostonians made of eccentric friends such as Bernard Berenson, Oscar Wilde, and James Whistler. Belle collected offbeat artists, unorthodox architects, and book antiquarians the way one might collect Pokémon cards. It would be fair to say that she found more kinship among them.   

 

Technically, Belle lived on Beacon Hill, but her intellect resided with the rare books, classical European art , and objects from the Near East that she collected. These, of course, became the foundation of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Today, many of the paintings and objects are in exactly the position in which she placed them. 

 

Here's a rub of readers. How much do you care about the travails of the upper class? For all Belle’s struggles, she was born into money, married into money, and died with more money. Franklin does a superb job of shining light on the snobbery of Boston society, but this too is something easily discovered. It’s an unfair comparison; but this was novelist Edith Wharton’s forte.  

 

Isabella Stewart Gardener is indeed fascinating, but sometimes The Lioness of Boston seems a souped-up encyclopedia entry. More engagement with the outside world would have helped, as would greater development to Jack’s character to imbue him with more depth than a yes-man appendage to Belle’s discontent. Do not misunderstand me, if you don't know much about Gardner, you should read The Lioness of Boston. My chief complaint is that too often the lioness is more like a declawed domestic cat then a ferocious beast. I wish that Franklin, like her protagonist, had been less orthodox. 

 

Rob Weir  

 

Relive the Age of Rail at the Shelburne Museum

 

 

All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art, 1840-1955

Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education

Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont

Through October 20, 2024

 

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to jump on a train and go anywhere in the United States you wanted? Take a look at this map from the late 1890s and you’ll see a spidery steel web that could have made your dream come true. 

 

Then

 

 

Now look at the map of what we have today. What happened? In a word, the automobile. Once Americans fell in love with the private automobile, railroads started to get ripped up. The building of interstate highways from 1956 on was the final blow that reduced the once-robust rail network of yore to today’s 80-pound weakling Amtrak system. 

 

 

Now

 

An exhibit at Vermont’s Shelburne Museum takes us back to the days in which rail was king. Lest you think automobile travel is superior, consider that in 1880 it took about 3 ½ days to get from New York to the West Coast by train. It still does, Amtrak jokes aside. If you drive and you actually stop to eat, see things, and sleep, it takes 5-6 days.

 

The railroad did as much if not more to knit the nation together as the Civil War. Think of living in the hinterlands in say, North Williston, Vermont, the Catskills of New York, some lonely outpost in the middle of nowhere, or the vast Texas plains and seeing a puff of steam in the distance. Even if you weren’t waiting to board, it reminded you there was a larger world to explore beyond your little slice of it. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it; the artists included in All Aboard: The Railroad in American Art have done it for you. 

Charles Heyde Steam in North Williston VT 1850

Thomas Cole River in the Catskills 1843

Charles Bowling Church at the Crossroads 1936

Georgia O'Keeffe Train Coming in Canyon, TX 1916

 

Artists have also captured the urban experience, the tunnels, bridges, fire-breathing factories, and the crush of patrons. Rail lines also advanced communications–telegraph lines frequently paralleled the rails–as well as American industry. In the latter case, they railroads were also a site for capital-labor conflict such as the Great Uprising of 1877, a significant nationwide general strike. It’s no coincidence that so many strikes took place among railroad workers. Theirs was hard work and the stress demands on engineers  were such that their jobs invaded their dreams.

 

Edward Hopper, Train Approaching a Tunnel

 

John Sloan, Six O'Clock

Otto Kohler ,Steel Valley Pittsburgh

 

Aaron Bohroad, Slag Heaps 1938

Joe Jones, All the Live Long Day

William Robinson Leigh, Attempt to Fire the PA RR Pittsburgh Roundhouse 1877

Thomas Hart Benton, Engineer's Dream 1931

 Railroads also spelled the end of the world known by Great Plains Indians, their counter-offensive notwithstanding. To this day historians debate the degree to which the railroad was a form of creative chaos or an instrument of genocide insofar as Native Americans were concerned. 

 

Henry Farny, Morning of a New Day 1907

 

In the end, urban Americans shaped the future, though Henry Ford literally paved the way to a post-rail society. Still, the railroad holds a romantic attachment in the minds of millions. Thoughts of train travel induces nostalgia and yearning in ways other forms transport seldom do. People still gawk inside Grand Central Station, but who lingers in the family garage or gets excited abut hanging out at an airport? 

Samuel Johnson Woolf, Under World 1910

 

You should see All Aboard if you can. After you have, walk down the hill to Shelburne Museum’s exhibit on Shelburne Station. Walk inside and imagine being a telegraph operator or sitting on a wooden bench with your luggage awaiting the train. It’s hard not to feel awe at the pistons and big wheels. 

 

 

Rob Weir